Course Correction
by Athena Alexandria
Summary: While babysitting Aaron one night, Kate has an interesting conversation with Desmond. Implied Jate.


I know some of you guys want me to update my current fic, and I promise I will, but I needed a break from the angst, so I finally finished the one-shot that's been in my head since I saw "Flashes Before Your Eyes" a few weeks ago.

I just saw the sneak peak for "The Brig", and I have to say, that was the first time I've ever felt sick to my stomach watching Skate. "I have to take a leak?", really? Sawyer doesn't even seem that interested in Kate anymore, and Kate -- can you say self-loathing? I can't help wondering if she's only doing it to punish herself for not being worthy of Jack...

Whatever's going on, writing this was cathartic, so I hope reading it will be too!

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COURSE CORRECTION

Watching Jack eat dinner with Juliet for the fourth night in a row, Kate felt a pang of regret settle over her heart. Once, it had been her laughing with him, stealing food off of his plate, doing that strange little dance between flirting and actually admitting her feelings.

But he didn't flirt with her anymore. She still tried, sometimes not so subtly, like the other night when he'd asked if he could borrow her spoon, but he always shut her down, walking off to rejoin Juliet as if the last three months had never happened.

As if they'd never been anything more than strangers on a plane.

It didn't seem to matter that she was with Sawyer now, because even though he was off on some adventure with Locke, she missed Jack more tonight, sitting on the other side of the campsite, than she did Sawyer all the way on the other side of the island. It was cold, she knew, but for some reason, it was easier to pine for something that she'd never had, than something she was no longer sure that she wanted.

She was with Sawyer now, but she was still lonely, not least of all because what they had couldn't easily be defined. They were together, in a sense, but they weren't really a couple; they had sex, but she never spent the night. They never talked about anything real either, because she couldn't talk to him, not the way she'd talked to Jack. They were both too wary, too damaged, divided by wall upon wall, so that she could never be sure how serious he'd been when he told her that he loved her.

She was lonely, but she wasn't completely alone tonight; tonight she had Aaron, while Charlie and Claire spent some time alone as a couple, a real one, the kind that shared their lives, and not just a bed. Charlie was taking Claire on a date; a moonlit picnic further up the beach; so she'd offered to watch the baby, since it wasn't like she had anything better to do. It was that or go to bed early.

He wasn't very good company though, cranky as he was, so rather than disturb Claire, she'd exhausted every song that she knew trying to get him to sleep. He didn't seem to like most of the ones she'd learned from the radio, or maybe it was just that he didn't know them, so she'd gone through the list of lullabies her own mother had sung to her as a kid, until, remembering something Claire had said, she hit on "Catch a Falling Star". After that, he was quiet, his tiny eyelids beginning to flutter as he settled into her chest with his fist in his mouth.

She was watching him with a smile, marvelling at her until now unsuspected mothering skills, when a shadow fell over them; she looked up to see Desmond striding across the campsite, searching the cluster of fires for someone.

"Hey Desmond." She offered him a friendly smile, knowing what it was like to feel like an outsider among the other survivors. For the first time in a long time, she had friends, here on the island, but she still didn't always feel like she belonged. She was different; they both were. She didn't need a power like his to see that.

He stopped, returning her smile as he bent to pat the baby's head. "Evening Kate, Chris. Lovely night, isn't it?"

At first, Kate thought she'd misheard the words beneath his Scottish lilt, but there was no way the two names sounded alike. "What?" she asked, feeling her smile fade as she stared at him, confused.

He frowned, his bewildered expression mirroring what she thought her own must have looked like. "Sorry, I don't—"

"You called the baby Chris," she explained. "His name is Aaron – I thought you knew that."

Desmond's frown increased, his brow furrowing as he considered her words. "No, I didn't – I would remember if I did. I know his name is Aaron, everyone knows." He started muttering to himself beneath his breath, but she ignored him as she added, "Apparently not, because you did – you said "Evening Kate, _Chris_"."

"Huh." Desmond was silent for a long moment. "Sorry," he said finally, looking away towards the fire. "I must've confused him with some other child. My brain gets a little mixed up these days."

He gave her a strange look, and tried to move past her, but Kate called out to him again, simultaneously frustrated and intrigued by this explanation. "What other child? He's the only kid on this side of the island."

He froze. "One from before then." She watched him shift uncomfortably in his place, eager to get away from her. She knew that behaviour well. "I'd best be going – I promised Hurley I'd play backgammon with him. He says he hasn't had a decent partner since the Others abducted that boy – Walt."

The Scotsman laughed, trying to turn the conversation around, but while Kate didn't doubt this was true; Hurley seemed to be one of the few survivors who wasn't weirded out by Desmond and his strange "time-travelling" ability; she couldn't help noting how defensive he was. "Who's Chris, Desmond?" she asked, too curious to let it go now. "Why don't you want to tell me about him?"

He shook his head. "Never mind, I shouldn't have brought it up."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not supposed to interfere." His voice grew serious again, no longer trying to conceal the fact that there was a story behind what he'd said, one that he was unwilling to share with her at that moment.

Of course, his reluctance to tell her only made her want to hear it more. "Interfere with what?" she pressed. "The future?"

She had always been something of a sceptic; the very idea that someone in the real world, even this island, could have a magic power had always seemed ludicrous to her, the result of Hurley reading too many comic books, but if he was telling the truth, and he really had had a vision, she wanted to know was it was. "Did you see something, Desmond? Something to do with me?"

He pursed his lips, staring down at the sand, so she added, "Locke told you I was a fugitive – if we get rescued, chances are, I'm going to jail. I'm sick of waiting for that to happen, so please, if you know something about how my life's gonna turn out, you have to tell me."

As soon as the words left her mouth, Kate blushed, ashamed at her own gullibility. Of course he couldn't see the future; she was just going to have to wait like everyone else.

A sympathetic smile crossed his lips, and he softened towards her, sitting down by the fire alongside her. "I've been there myself – trust me, you don't want to go. In there, you have too much time to sit around and think about your life, which sounds all right, except that there's nothing you can do about any of it."

An uncomfortable silence fell over them, until Desmond restarted the conversation by adding, "I'm going to regret telling you this, but just now, when I was talking to you, I saw you with another baby, Chris. He was – will be – your son. I'm not sure when."

Kate wasn't sure what she was expecting, but it wasn't that. She stared at him, stunned. "Me? With a baby?" she repeated incredulously. She was a fugitive; she couldn't have a baby. Not now, not ever. "Are you sure he was mine?" Maybe she was just watching him for someone else too.

Desmond laughed, poking at the flames with a stick. "Yes, I'm sure. You were singing him to sleep."

Kate let her eyes wander to the infant in her lap. Her, a mother? It was a nice idea, and maybe he believed it, but she was still having trouble accepting it herself. "I'm going to have a baby, here on the island?"

"Two babies," he corrected her, grinning as he warmed to the topic. After delivering so much devastating news lately, she figured he must be glad to have something less morbid to share. "There was a little girl too – Diana, you called her."

She mulled this over, a slow smile spreading over her face as she tried to imagine these children hypothetical children. Chris and Diana. If he was right, she must name her daughter after her mother, Diane. She wasn't sure why she would call her son Chris though. "Are you sure that was the boy's name? Chris?" she asked, wondering if this was proof of the fact that there were holes in his so-called 'vision'. "Because I'm not even sure I like it."

"You don't," he agreed, laughing as if he was anticipating this comment.

Which he probably was, she realised.

"You don't at first – the whole camp hears you arguing about it – but it's a family name, short for Christian. You call him Chris to give him his own identity, like your daughter."

Kate stared into the fire, trying to remember if she'd heard this name, or some variation of it, before. "I don't know anyone called Christian," she confessed, feeling sheepish, as if she should already know what he was talking about. If it was a family name, shouldn't she recognise it? Unless…

She didn't have to ask, because Desmond answered her next question for her. "No, but the doctor does. It was the name of his father – his death is what brought him to the island, to you. You could say it was fate, or destiny, or whatever you want to call it – the universe conspiring against you." He let out a bitter laugh. "Trust me, I know a thing or two about that, although I can't say, in my case, things worked out for the better."

As hard as she tried to follow all this, Kate couldn't seem to stop her thoughts from getting stuck on the word 'doctor'. There was only one on this island. "Jack? Are you sure?"

She glanced across the campsite, to where Jack was sitting at another fire, talking animatedly with Juliet, oblivious to any future that he might have with Kate. No matter how much they both wanted it, they could never seem to make things work; would they really be able to put all that aside one day, and have the life the Scotsman was describing?

Desmond frowned again, staring into the fire, concentrating on piecing together what he'd seen. "Yes, I remember," he said, growing in confidence as it seemed to come back to him, "because you were sitting there with the baby, and then he brought the little girl to you to say goodnight. She kisses you and both, and then he carries her off to your tent, to bed."

He paused, waiting for the rest of the vision to return. "He takes her to the tent, then baby cries, and you sing to it. That's when I thought he was Aaron – or Aaron was him – I don't know. It's all a little confusing."

Returning her attention to Aaron, dozing peacefully in her arms, Kate tried to envision family this scene, hoping, more than anything, that it, and Desmond's power, were real. She wanted that future, with Jack and their children, even if it meant staying on the island for the rest of her life.

Of course, they still had a long way to go before any of that was a possibility. They still had to fix their relationship first.

"You do know I'm with Sawyer, right?" she asked as Desmond stood up to leave, though she couldn't seem to conceal her grin at the idea that Jack might still want her, in spite of everything that had happened..

"For now." He gave her a knowing smile as he headed off in search of Hurley. "But that's the thing about destiny – you can't change it."


End file.
